Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Report: 25% Dumped Their ObamaCare Plans Last Year

Health Reform: President Obama described ObamaCare as a great product. So why did one in four of those who signed up in 2015 cancel their plans?

An official report released last Friday said that enrollment in the ObamaCare exchanges fell to 8.8 million by the end of the year, from 11.7 million who’d initially signed up. That’s a 25% decline.

About 1.5 million who signed up never paid their first premium, so the number of actual enrollees dropped to 10.2 million by the end of March 2015. Then another 1.1 million canceled their coverage in the last six months of the year, according to an analysis by the Mercatus Center‘s Brian Blase. Half a million got booted off because they couldn’t verify citizenship or immigration status.

There’s been no solid research to why so many canceled their ObamaCare plans before the year was out, but it’s not hard to make educated guesses.

For many, ObamaCare just isn’t worth it, even for many of the 84% who get insurance subsidies. The plans typically feature sky-high deductibles. As the New York Times reported, even if the coverage is cheap, that’s leaving “some newly insured feeling nearly as vulnerable as they were before they had coverage.” Why bother paying even heavily subsidized premiums?